Digging for the true story of Kelly

10 Jan 2013, 9 p.m.

How weapons experts shed new light on the infamous gang's desperate final gunfight.

THE breakthroughs at the dig arrived quietly.

In the final days, the bottom layers were scraped out of the western bedroom, the one in which the bodies of Dan and Steve were found. A search beneath the ashes of a charred sill beam revealed a small copper cap. Jon Sterenberg, who had a good working knowledge of ballistics, had to photograph it in situ before it could be lifted from the soil and identified but its depth and location meant that it was probably associated with the siege.

A quick inspection found a crescent-shaped indent on the base. This was the mark left by a rifle hammer 128 years earlier, proving it was a percussion cap from a particularly old firearm. Because it was found inside the building it seemed to be the first evidence of return fire from the holed-up Kelly Gang. This was a significant discovery that could provide new evidence about the gang's activities during the siege. But who fired it and when?

When the outbreak began, the Kellys were lightly armed. By the time of the siege, they had amassed an impressive arsenal of rifles, shotguns and revolvers. After the killings at Stringybark Creek, the gang strengthened their armoury by making off with police weapons. A Martini-Henry rifle was added to the collection after it was dropped by a policeman near Greta one night. This was the rifle used to test the armour prototype.

On the way to Euroa, Ned bailed up a hunting party and stole the Snider-Enfield rifle that he nicknamed "Betty". The raids on Euroa and Jerilderie netted at least half-a-dozen revolvers. Two rifles were legally purchased – a Winchester and a Colt revolver with an alarming tendency to backfire. With the gang's original weapons it brought the number of guns in the arsenal to about 30.

Ned took the gun that he used at Stringybark Creek to Glenrowan, a battered old sawn-off carbine that Harry Power might have given him, literally held together with string and said to have such a curve in the barrel that it could shoot around corners.

The best of the weapons obtained by the gang were not used in the siege. The quality rifles, including "Betty", were given to the sympathisers, probably for use in the uprising.

The percussion cap could only be linked to a few weapons at the inn, namely the pistols and the Colt, because these were the ones that used the antiquated system of powder-filled caps to fire a ball. Now the question was whether the cap came from one of the pistols or Ned Kelly's alarmingly unreliable revolving rifle.

The answer lay in matching that rifle to the percussion cap. The Hammond family of Canberra owns the old Colt rifle as well as Joe Byrne's suit of armour. Both treasures have been handed down through the family since the police superintendent Francis Hare gave them to Rupert Hammond's ancestor, Sir William Clarke, soon after the siege. Hare had convalesced after his wrist injury at the Clarke family estate, "Rupertswood", near Melbourne, and said he presented the family with the armour and rifle as a gesture of thanks.

As part of the filming of the Renegade Films television documentary Ned Kelly Uncovered, Rupert Hammond brought the old rifle to Glenrowan in November 2008. A retired Victoria Police comparative analysis expert, Henry Huggins, was brought in to compare the percussion cap with the weapon. He identified the cap as a "top hat" type, larger than those used in pistols and therefore from a rifle. The first box was ticked; the pistols used in the siege could be ruled out.

Huggins fitted a makeshift foil cap over the firing nipple and dry-fired Rupert Hammond's rifle. Then he used a microscope to compare the hammer strike on the foil with the original strike mark on the percussion cap. The hammer on the Hammond rifle had a small deformity that left a divot on the foil cap. There was a matching divot on the old percussion cap. It confirmed that the ancient firearm owned by Rupert Hammond really was Ned Kelly's Colt revolving rifle. It seemed to show that Ned had been the last person to handle the percussion cap as he fought for his life 128 years earlier.

But the dig still had one more secret to reveal. The archaeologists had joked that the best discoveries are sometimes not made until a dig is almost over and it proved true on the second-last day, when a small, flattened shell was found in the rear bedroom. It was a revolver cartridge that had been fired during the siege. Three more cartridges from the same weapon and a shotgun shell were found nearby.

A quick check of the inn's floor plan firmed up a rapidly forming theory. It showed that any bullets coming through the front of the inn would have hit the interior walls at the back of the bar, parlour and dining room. Importantly, molten remains of spent bullets that had earlier been discovered in a line at the foot of these interior walls indicated that some of those slugs either became lodged in the timber or fell to the floor. That meant the two bedrooms at the back offered some protection from the killing zone in the front rooms. And that knowledge helped archaeologist Adam Ford make a remarkable deduction about the gunfight.

Edited extract of The True Story of Ned Kelly's Last Stand by Paul Terry, published by Allen & Unwin. This book is published in collaboration with the State Library and showcases elements of the library's unique pictures, maps, manuscripts and rare books collections.